Pilgrimage to Blue Lake

For so many years, you have built elaborate cairns

along the trail to the house of your self. You have found

just the right rocks for balancing, just the point in the trail

where you might get lost—so that in every season,

in the deepest snow, you can find your way back.

Each time, you have laid the fire in the meadow

at the edge of the lake with the kindling of your joy

and your grief—watched the flames burn slowly at first,

then fast and high as they quicken, bringing light to dark spaces.

And so it is, that when you arrive on the shores of Blue Lake

this day, just after a fleet of storm clouds has past, you hear

a different drumbeat pulsing from the land, as the honeyed light

plays off the thin layers of ice and flow. Winter glints

from the eye of summer~ and you wonder if it is time to build

a stronger nest here for this next round of seasons, or if it is time

to fledge all together. And the 400 year old spruce whisper~

come close to the conversation that lives in the center

of all that noise within. Perched here, at the top of the world

you stand shaky, barely balanced on the edge of this and that.

Choose, the lake says, lapping against shore, the dusky lines

merging with sky. And below and beyond is the great horizon

you wish to call your own. But you have never quite believed

you could walk beyond these cairns you have so carefully tended.

And this sacred valley is filled with mist—for the light

has been drinking the snow all day long, and now you and the sky

are drunk on the cascade of tiny pink flowers bursting from cracks

in ancient granite. And the 400 years old spruce whisper,

tell me your story—and you wonder which one you will tell.

Will you speak about the sack of stones you have carried

from your lineage? Or will you tell them about this infinite field

that is your heart opening and closing, the blue lake

of your soul freezing and thawing~ the one of you who,

right in this moment, is shattering into a thousand diamonds

on the water, each jewel a note in eternity’s song?

©Laura Weaver

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